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labyrinth of losings and findings; jealousies; enchantments; conflicts with giants, and single-handed against armies; to the exact state in which all the lovers might with the greatest propriety indulge their reciprocal wishes-when, the deuce is in it, you think, but they must all be married now-suddenly the three ladies turn upon their lovers: and, as an exemplification of the moral of the play, "Loving for Loving's sake," and a hyperplatonic, truly Spanish proof of their affections-demand that the lovers shall consent to their mistresses' taking upon them the vow of a single life! to which the gallants, with becoming refinement, can do no less than consent.— The fact is that it was a court play, in which the characters-males, giants, and all-were played by females, and those of the highest order of Grandeeship. No nobleman might be permitted amongst them; and it was against the forms, that a great court lady of Spain should consent to such an unrefined motion, as that of wedlock, though but in a play.

Appended to the drama, the length of which may be judged from its having taken nine days in the representation, and me three hours in the reading of it-hours well wasted-is a poetical account of a fire, which broke out in the theatre on one of the nights of its acting, when the whole of the dramatis personæ were nearly burnt, because the common people out of "base fear," and the nobles out of "pure respect," could not think of laying hands upon such "Great Donnas;" till the young king, breaking the etiquette, by snatching up his queen, and bearing her through the flames upon his back, the grandees (dilatory Æneases), followed his example, and each saved one (Anchises-fashion), till the whole courtly company of

comedians were got off in tolerable safety.-Imagine three or four stout London firemen, on such an occasion, standing off in mere respect.

THOMAS HEYWOOD. The Fair Maid of the Exchange. The full title of this play is "The Fair Maid of the Exchange, with the Humours of the Cripple of Fenchurch." The above satire against some Dramatic Plagiarists of the time, is put into the mouth of the Cripple, who is an excellent fellow, and the hero of the Comedy. Of his humour this extract is a sufficient specimen; but he is described (albeit a tradesman, yet wealthy withal) with heroic qualities of mind and body; the latter of which he evinces by rescuing his mistress (the Fair Maid) from three robbers by the main force of one crutch lustily applied; and the former by his foregoing the advantages which this action gained him in her good opinion, and bestowing his wit and finesse in procuring for her a husband, in the person of his friend Golding, more worthy of her beauty, than he could. conceive his own maimed and halting limbs to be. It would require some boldness in a dramatist nowadays to exhibit such a character; and some luck in finding a sufficient actor, who would be willing to personate the infirmities, together with the virtues, of the noble Cripple.

After this pleasant specimen of the phantom vein of Heywood, I am tempted to extract some lines from his "Hierarchie of Angels, 1634;" not strictly. as a Dramatic poem, but because the passage contains a string of names, all but that of Watson, his contemporary Dramatists. He is complaining in a mood half serious, half comic, of the disrespect which Poets in his own times meet with from the world,

compared with the honours paid them by Antiquity. Then, they could afford them three or four sonorous names, and at full length; as to Ovid, the addition of Publius Naso Sulmensis; to Seneca, that of Lucius Annæas Cordubensis; and the like. Now, says he, Our modern Poets to that pass are driven,

Those names are curtail'd which they first had given;
Dekker's but Tom; nor May, nor Middleton;

And he's now but Jack Ford, that once was John.

Possibly our Poet was a little sore, that this contemptuous curtailment of their baptismal names was chiefly exercised upon his poetical brethren of the Drama. We hear nothing about Sam Daniel or Ned Spenser, in his catalogue. The familiarity of common discourse might probably take the greater liberties with the Dramatic Poets, as conceiving of them as more upon a level with the Stage Actors. Or did their greater publicity, and popularity in consequence, fasten these diminutives upon them out of a feeling of love and kindness, as we say Harry the Fifth, rather than Henry, when we would express goodwill?—as himself says, in those reviving words put into his mouth by Shakspeare, where he would comfort and confirm his doubting brothers :

Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,
But Harry, Harry!

And doubtless Heywood had an indistinct conception of this truth, when (coming to his own. name), with that beautiful retracting which is natural to one that, not satirically given, has wandered a little out of his way into something recriminative, he goes on to say :

Nor speak I this, that any here exprest

Should think themselves less worthy than the rest

Whose names have their full syllables and sound;
Or that Frank, Kit, or Jack, are the least wound
Unto their fame and merit. I for my part
(Think others what they please) except that heart,
Which courts my love in most familiar phrase;
And that it takes not from my pains or praise,
If any one to me so bluntly come :

I hold he loves me best that calls me Tom.

The foundations of the English Drama were laid deep in tragedy by Marlowe and others-Marlowe especially while our comedy was yet in its lisping state. To this tragic preponderance (forgetting his own sweet Comedies and Shakspeare's), Heywood seems to refer with regret; as in the "Roscian Strain" he evidently alludes to Alleyn, who was great in the "Jew of Malta," as Heywood elsewhere testifies, and in the principal tragic parts both of Marlowe and Shakspeare.

The Brazen Age.-I cannot take leave of this Drama without noticing a touch of the truest pathos, which the writer has put into the mouth of Meleager, as he is wasting away by the operation of the fatal brand, administered to him by his wretched Mother. My flame increaseth still-Oh Father Eneus; And you, Althea, whom I would call Mother, But that my genius prompts me thou'rt unkind: And yet farewell!

What is the boasted " Forgive me, but forgive me!" of the dying wife of Shore in Rowe, compared with these three little words?

The English Traveller.-Heywood's preface to this play is interesting, as it shows the heroic indifference about the opinion of posterity, which some of these great writers seem to have felt. There is a mag

nanimity in authorship as in everything else. His ambition seems to have been confined to the pleasure of hearing the players speak his lines while he lived. It does not appear that he ever contemplated the possibility of being read by after ages. What a slender pittance of fame was motive sufficient to the production of such plays as the English Traveller, the Challenge for Beauty, and the Woman Killed with Kindness! Posterity is bound to take care that a writer loses nothing by such a noble modesty.

If I were to be consulted as to a Reprint of our Old English Dramatists, I should advise to begin with the collected Plays of Heywood. He was a fellow Actor, and fellow Dramatist, with Shakspeare. He possessed not the imagination of the latter; but in all those qualities which gained for Shakspeare the attribute of gentle, he was not inferior to him. Generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depths of passion; sweetness, in a word, and gentleness; Christianism; and true hearty Anglicism of feelings, shaping that Christianism; shine throughout his beautiful writings in a manner more conspicuous than in those of Shakspeare, but only more conspicuous, inasmuch as in Heywood these qualities are primary, in the other subordinate to poetry. I love them both equally, but Shakspeare has most of my wonder. Heywood should be known to his countrymen, as he deserves. His plots are almost invariably English. I am sometimes jealous, that Shakspeare laid so few of his scenes at home. I laud Ben Jonson, for that in one instance having framed the first draught of Every Man in His Humour in Italy, he changed the scene, and Anglicised his characters. The names of

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